world, in which his thought and feeling were sunken, and which seemed to be so far away from the actual world about him, there was something impressive and disconcerting. His eyes were grey, sharp, and old, and one eyelid had a heavy droop or ptosis which, although it did not obscure his vision, gave his expression at times a sinister glint, a malevolent humour. “—Say!” here his voice sank to a deliberate and confiding whisper, “(Phuh! phuh! phuh! phuh! phuh!) Say—a man who would—he told me—Oh, vile! vile! vile! my boy!” his uncle whispered, shutting his eyes in a kind of shuddering ecstasy as if at the memory of things too gloriously obscene to be repeated. “Can you imagine, can you even dream of such a state of affairs if he had possessed an atom, a scintilla of delicacy and good breeding! Yes, sir!” he said with decision. “I suppose there’s no doubt about it! His beginnings were very lowly, very poor and humble indeed!… Not that that is in any sense to his discredit!” Uncle Bascom said hastily, as if it had occurred to him that his words might bear some taint of snobbishness. “Oh, by no means, by no means, by no means!” he sang out, with a sweeping upward gesture of his long arm, as if he were clearing the air of wisps of smoke. “Some of our finest men—some of the nation’s leaders, have come from just such surroundings as those. Beyond a doubt! Beyond a doubt! There’s no question about it whatever! Say!”—here he turned suddenly upon the boy again with the ptotic and sinister intelligence of his eye. “Was Lincoln an aristocrat? Was he the issue of wealthy parents? Was he brought up with a silver spoon in his mouth? Was our own former governor, the Vice-President of the United States today, reared in the lap of luxury! Not on your life!” howled Uncle Bascom. “He came from frugal and thrifty Vermont farming stock, he has never deviated a jot from his early training, he remains today what he has always been—one of the simplest of men! Finest people on earth, no question about it whatever!”
Again, he meditated gravely with lost stare across the apex of his great joined hands, and the boy noticed again, as he had noticed so often, the great dignity of his head in thought—a head that was high-browed, lean and lonely, a head that not only in its cast of thought but even in its physical contour, and in its profound and lonely earnestness, bore an astonishing resemblance to that of Emerson—it was, at times like these, as grand a head as the young man had ever seen, and on it was legible the history of man’s loneliness, his dignity, his grandeur and despair.
“Yes, sir!” said Bascom, in a moment. “He is, of course, a vulgar fellow and
